Exclusive–Marsha Blackburn: ‘Silicon Valley Elites Are Trying to Impose Their Values’ on Americans

Kris Connor via Getty ImagesSEAN MORAN14 Mar 2018

House Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who is running for the U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee in 2018, told Breitbart News Daily that “Silicon Valley elites are trying to impose their values” on Americans and other digital users.

Chairman Blackburn told Breitbart News Daily:

What we need to realize is that Silicon Valley elites are trying to impose their values on pepole that are using these different platforms, we refer to them as edge providers. Your Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and different social media applications. We already started to look at that; I chair the subcommittee on Communications and Technology. They censored me when I put up my announcement video and they didn’t agree with the video, Twitter blocked that video. We fought back, they reversed themselves. People ought not to do that.

Last October Twitter blocked one of Blackburn’s U.S. Senate campaign ads in which she touted her pro-life beliefs and her opposition to selling aborted baby parts, which the social media company claimed was “inflammatory.”

Likewise, the social media applications and search engines need to be careful, the prioritization needs to be organic. When they block things it does not need to be subjective. Something is wrong when they block a faith-based movie, but they will not block videos that are put up by terrorist organizations or those that do not wish our country well.

Social media platforms have received criticism for their rampant censorship across the political spectrum. Facebook recently banned pages run by far-right Britain First across their platform.

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, warned that a “few dominant platforms” have become Internet gatekeepers and can now control what ideas can be seen on the Internet.

In the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) “Restoring Internet Freedom Order,” which repealed the agency’s 2015 net neutrality order, they argued that content providers such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter have censored the Internet, stifled conservative and alternative voices, and serve as a greater threat to free speech compared to Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

“I love Twitter, and I use it all the time,” argued FCC Chairman Aji Pai in November. “But let’s not kid ourselves; when it comes to an open Internet, Twitter is part of the problem. The company has a viewpoint and uses that viewpoint to discriminate.”

“People need to be able to control their virtual ‘you,’” Marsha argued.